Page:Madame de Staël (1887 Bella Duffy).djvu/120

110 To this pageant succeeded various costume quadrilles, in which Kotzebue appeared as a priest of Mercury, poppy crowned, caduceus in hand, and so ugly and awkward, that Madame de Staël wonders why her imagination was not irretrievably ruined by the sight of him.

One likes to think of her at this court in the midst of such famous and distinguished people; the personages so outwardly brilliant, so inwardly dull, who surrounded her having vanished down the gulfs of Time, her own unique personality stands out vividly against the picturesque but confused background reconstructed by our fancy.

At Berlin she first saw and liked August Wilhelm Schlegel, destined later to be so unwelcome to Sismondi, Bonstetten, and her other friends at Coppet. She succumbed at once to the varied attractions of his colossal learning, his surprising linguistic accomplishments, and his great conversational powers. She felt that here was a foeman worthy of her steel, and she magnanimously overlooked his acerbity, his pedantry, and vanity. She had indeed a royal indifference to the defects of great minds. It was only the greatness she cared for.

Berlin was destined to be associated with the greatest, perhaps the most genuine, grief of her life. She left it pleased with her reception, enriched with new friends, new experiences, and new ideas. She had been happier there than six months previously she would have admitted she could ever be again. Far happier than at Coppet, which for years past had only been a place where she tarried and amused herself as she could until the moment came for returning to Paris. She had treasured up a wealth of conversation